“Tah, I hate to sound cliche, but I need you to come and take a look at this.”
Now that Kal had separate bodies for each of its six selves, the team of small, round, mechanical beings could actually spend time doing different jobs, rather than having to do everything one step at a time. Koh, who always had a special talent for all things wave-based, had been spending most of his time scanning the immense void, sending out sonar waves and observing what bounced back. Most of what Koh had seen so far had been somewhat reasonable. But the readings he was currently looking at made no sense at all.
Tah stood in the doorway, tapping his foot. “What is it, Koh? Is it that big lump of gold ore again?”
“No, no, it’s…” Koh paused. “Just come here so I can show you.”
After a moment, Tah wandered over, curious. “What’s going on?”
Koh tapped on a couple of screens, making something buzz. A screen to Tah’s side sprung into life, showing… a… thing? Tah definitely wasn’t sure, so Koh got up to describe it all to him.
“Alright, so, you know everyone broadcasts at different frequencies, right? Life Goddesses use loud, echoing, low level frequencies, while we tend to use middling frequencies to avoid detection. Voidborns use a very specific wavelength for themselves, and I picked one of them up. But there’s something wrong with the frequency.”
“Is it, like, a distress call or something?” Tah asked.
“No…”
Before Koh could answer, there was a loud knock at the door. Nuh grunted, metal, clawed hands on his sides. “Tah, schedule says it’s my turn to keep an eye on autopilot and Leh isn’t letting me! Also, we’re not moving.”
“Nuh!” Koh protested. “I told you! I asked Leh to keep the ship steady while I was gathering data on this anomaly! I said that Leh and I would let you do flight duties when we’re done!”
“What anomaly?” Nuh blinked.
Koh rolled his crystalline eyes and turned back to Tah. “I thought it was just a standard Voidborn call, but the weird thing about it is… well, it also uses… familiar frequencies. Really, really familiar frequencies. Basically the same frequencies we use.”
“You mean… Decay Lord frequencies? Why would a Voidborn use frequencies that are used by beings they consider scum? I mean, aside from trying to contact us?”
Koh glanced at his screens. “That’s the thing. They’re not Voidborn frequencies. And they’re not Decay Lord frequencies either. And they’re certainly not trying to contact us. Whatever this is, it is using the same frequencies that WE use.”
“We as in us six?” Nuh asked.
Koh pointed to Nuh, nodding frantically. “YES! They’re using the same frequency as us!”
“But…” Nuh grunted. “Isn’t that a… a bad thing?”
“Yeah…” Tah immediately agreed. “But more importantly, our universe was destroyed. We cleaned it all, as we were commanded to. There… shouldn’t be anything else left that is still using our frequencies, aside from the Nest…”
“I’m gonna assume that what Koh is picking up… isn’t where we left the Nest, right?” Nuh seemed hesitant, having lost his normally gruff demeanour. “That is… something that we didn’t clean…”
“Or something copying our frequency to lure us closer…” Koh muttered. “Tah, what are you thinking?”
Tah hesitated, then tutted. “We should go back to the Thantir One. See if we can get anyone to help us identify the source before we do anything else.”
Nuh and Koh both nodded.
“Alright, let’s plot a course back and get ourselves out of here…”